God’s Servant Prepared: Isaiah 6 — A Christian Growth Message

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Transcript

Thank you our gracious God for bringing us to a new day, and we pray that today as we look at this part of your word, you would open our eyes to see wonderful things, that we might understand your ways, that we might know how to follow, we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.

You’ll remember the story of the man who’s trying out his new parachute, and he jumps from the plane, pulls the cord, and nothing happens, and he’s hurtling down to the ground very fast, and as he’s hurtling down to the ground, another man goes shooting up into the air past him, and the man with the new unworking parachute calls out, you wouldn’t happen to know how these new parachutes work, and the guy who’s shooting up in the air calls back, I’m having enough trouble with my new gas barbecue.

And we are discovering in the book of Isaiah that God knows how to raise up and to bring down. He’s raised up a prophet to speak, who’s going to tell the people that he or that God is going to bring them down.

Now Isaiah is the book that we’re considering for these occasional weeks in these months, and Isaiah was a prophet in the 8th century BC and his job was to warn the people of God.

The top half of Israel had already been obliterated. Isaiah is now preaching to the people in the lower half of the land, and you may remember that a few weeks ago, Isaiah began with basically the words, listen.

That’s how the book begins. Listen.

Isaiah says listen heaven, listen earth, God is about to do very remarkable things and basically the, the warning of Isaiah went like this, God said to the people, listen, your hearts are dead. I know you’re religious. I know you’re very religious. But Isaiah said to the people, God’s people, your hearts are dead, and so I’m about to deport you. I’m about to send you off to the land of Babylon, you’re going to be there for a long time. You’re gonna be in exile in Babylon, but after a long time I will bring you back, I’ll bring you back to the land, and the people scoffed.

As if to say that’ll never happen, because God loves us.

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Some of you may remember the name Kerry Packer, when he was about to have cardiovascular surgery, said to the famous surgeon Victor Chang, your job, pal, your job is to fix me up so that I can keep smoking as much as I want.

And you can imagine the heart surgeon saying to Kerry Packer, don’t do this. This road is not a good road for you to go down, pick a better road.

And that’s what Isaiah is saying to God’s people, don’t go down the road that you’re going down.

Now we need to ask, who is this man Isaiah because his words began at chapter 1, but we don’t meet him until chapter 6. It’s almost like chapters 1 to 5 is his words going ahead of him, and now in chapter 6 we meet him.

And we’re going to break the chapter Isaiah 6 into two halves, and it’s on page 1027 in your Bibles if you want to follow. The first half is what I’ve called the vision of God, he sees something of God, and the grief of Isaiah, the vision of God and the grief of Isaiah.

And the second half, which is verses 6 to 13, we’re going to call the solution of God, the solution to the grief, and the mission of Isaiah, OK, got those two? Vision of God, grief of Isaiah, that’s the 1st. 2nd half, solution of God and the mission of Isaiah.

So let’s think about the vision of God and the grief of Isaiah. This is verses 1 to 5.

I do want you to follow with me on this for two reasons, one, because the greatest need in the world is for people to come face to face with God in His word, before they come face to face with him literally.

And the second is because God has the wonderful ability to meet the need of the hour. He always has had the ability to meet the need of the hour. And he always will have the ability, and he does that here.

So we read in chapter 6 verse 1, that in the same year that the Jewish king died, Isaiah had a vision of God, probably in the temple, in the Jewish temple, he had a vision of God. Now this king, this Jewish king had ruled for 52 years. So a little bit like Queen Elizabeth the Second, he’d become like an institution, he was, he was looked on as a kind of permanent fixture, but he died, he wasn’t a permanent fixture, and no leader is a permanent fixture.

And yet when this king died, Isaiah was given a vision of the God who is permanent on the throne. When it says that Isaiah saw the Lord, we need to be very careful when we think about this because of course God is not a literal body sitting on a throne, looking like an old man with a beard in a big white nightie. God doesn’t have a literal body. Nobody says the Bible can see him in his glory and survive.

So when it says that Isaiah saw the Lord, it goes on to say that is he saw the train of his robe.

It’s beautifully put, so that you’ll realise that Isaiah saw something of his greatness, something of his glory, and whenever God’s messengers in the Old Testament speak of seeing God, it’s always like this, they see a bit of the throne, they see a bit of the brightness, they see a bit of the glory, but they don’t see God’s face, even when Moses, we’re told, saw God face to face, it was not literal – it was a way of saying that he spoke with him.

But he didn’t see him, because it tells us in John’s Gospel that nobody saw God, until God walked into the world, in the person of Jesus, that’s the first time, anybody ever saw the face of God, it’s when Jesus came.

But Isaiah sees something of the spectacular glory of God, and he sees in verse 2 heavenly beings flying around God, and he sees verse 4 the temple shake, and it was a huge temple, can you imagine this building shaking, and he sees the temple full of smoke, which is a mark of the presence of God.

Now my friends, I think you’ll agree with me, I think this is a piece of logic, that if there is a God who can put the universe together, and I’m in the galaxies, I’m in the millions of the galaxies, if he can put the universe together, and if he only has to speak and the universe is gone, you and I are going to have difficulty summarising his power. It’s not going to be easy for us to put into words the power of a God like that.

Part of the insanity of the human race is to see God as small and us as big.

It is insane that we would think of ourselves as very powerful, and God as a bit of a weakling, but you’ll know that if you ever hear people talking about God, they’ll joke about him and dismiss him as if he’s a puny thing, but that is insane. The power of God is really beyond words, however, when God in His kindness presents himself, he presents himself in the person of a servant, Jesus.

Not some frightening, spectacular, terrifying presentation of himself.

Now it’s not the power of God that impresses Isaiah.

Although God is very powerful, it’s not the power of God that impresses him, the thing that impresses Isaiah is the purity of God, it’s the holiness of God, and even the heavenly beings who are perfect and travelling around in glory, they call out the holiness of God, the holiness of God, and it’s the only time in the whole Bible that we ever get a triple reference to anything.

You remember there were times where Jesus would use a double reference and he would say something like, you need to listen to me carefully, Jesus said, truly, truly I say to you, and he used what we would call the comparative, but there’s only one superlative, and that’s where God is called holy, and it’s a very hard thing to capture the holiness of God, but it is a totally impressive thing. It’s not at all unimpressive, it’s totally impressive.

I was having lunch with a man recently and he told me that they’d had a couple stay with them for a few weeks in the house, and the man said to me, the couple was so godly.

That my wife and I felt quite ashamed at the standard of our godliness. They weren’t annoyed by the couple, they weren’t critical of the couple, they didn’t find the couple disappointing. They were exposed by the couple. And they were impressed by the couple.

Now the perfect example of this in the New Testament is you may remember where Jesus was with the disciples and decided to step into the boat and help them to catch a whole lot of fish, and Peter said to Jesus, Lord, in the face of the miracle, please move away from me, please move away from me because I’m a sinful man.

And in Isaiah’s vision, you see these heavenly beings around God who are sinless, find that they cannot easily look at the greatness of God, even though they’re perfect.

And they belong, so to speak, in heaven, they cannot find it easy to look at, and they cover their feet and they cover their, well they continue to fly. It’s almost as though they’re saying we can’t properly look at you.

And we can’t even stand in your presence, that we continue to fly in serving you, because the holiness of God is so spectacular. The holiness of God is his character. His purity, his perfection, his wonder. And the glory of God is the radiance that comes out from God.

The effect on Isaiah is grief. It’s a conviction, you see that in verse 5, it’s a sense of shame, he calls out, woe is me, I’m finished, I’m ruined. It’s the end of me. He sees in the face of God his own wretchedness. He sees as he looks at God’s righteousness, his corruption. And he says to God, I have seen the Lord and I have unclean lips.

Why does he mention his lips, it seems a very strange thing to be worried about, doesn’t it?

But you see, Isaiah has been telling the people of God that their lips are fake. That their religion is just talk. He has been telling the people of God that their religious profession is just talk.

And in the face of God’s righteousness, he suddenly realises that he is a fake, and he is false, and there is a massive gulf between what he says and what he does, and Isaiah’s ministry is the ministry of speaking with his lips, and he realises that he’s not worthy to speak for this God, he’s no better than anyone else. So he may be a very gifted speaker, but he’s a corrupt person, and he suddenly realises that he shouldn’t be talking about God to these people.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the doctrine which is called total depravity, but theologians talk about how we have total depravity, and total depravity doesn’t mean that we are totally depraved, that is, we’re as black as we could be. Total depravity means that there’s no part of us because of sin that’s as good as it should be. In other words imagine your life is a cup of cold water, and 4 drops of poison have been dropped into the cup. There’s no part of the water in the cup that is not affected by the poison.

There’s no part of me that is not affected by sin, there’s no part of you that’s not affected by sin, it’s in the mind and the heart and the soul and the strength. We’re not as bad as we could be, but we’re in no part as good as we should be, and Isaiah realises something of this as he sees God face to face.

Perhaps you see, he’s been comparing himself to others, which is very easy to do, isn’t it? I’m better than other people. Perhaps he’s feeling a little bit superior, and now he suddenly compares himself to God and he realises that he’s far, far short.

So that’s the first point this morning, he has a vision of God and he feels his grief in the face of it.

The second thing this morning is the solution of God to the grief and the mission of Isaiah, which comes in verses 6 to 13.

Now many years ago, there was a Scottish preacher called Alexander White, and he ministered at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, he was a very fine preacher, but on one occasion he employed a young assistant who was a better preacher.

The young assistant was so gifted, people used to come to hear the young preacher preach.

And one particular Sunday we’re told that this young preacher bounded up the stairs of the pulpit, two at a time, so keen to preach and so able. And he’d memorised his sermon off by heart, and he’d memorised the Bible passage off by heart. And he leapt up the stairs and he preached his he began to preach his sermon and after a few minutes he had a complete blank, couldn’t remember anything.

And with a great deal of awkwardness, he sort of mumbled on for a few minutes and he came down totally dejected, and he went and sat in the back room.

And Alexander White went and found him and the young man said, what went wrong, and Alexander White said these very clever words, he said, young man, if you had gone up, with the humility that you came down, then you might have with the, I’ve forgotten how it goes, but anyway, you, you, you got it all wrong, you got it all wrong. Here it is, I’ve written it on my note because I’ve not memorised the sermon. If you’d, if you’d gone up, if you’d gone up as you came down, you might have come down as you went up.

That’s it. I feel like running over that again, but I won’t.

Isaiah is now on his face with humility. And God is about to raise him up because he’s in a better position now to serve him, he’s got a great deal of humility.

But what’s the answer to the filth that Isaiah feels about himself? And the answer to that is that the answer to the filth is not inside Isaiah. Have you noticed that? He doesn’t say, well I’ll improve myself, I’m going to do a better job. No, no, no, chapter 6, verse 6 – one of the heavenly beings, knowing that Isaiah has no solution in himself, takes a coal from the temple altar and takes it to Isaiah and touches his lips.

And so you see the solution to Isaiah’s filth comes from outside Isaiah.

Now we live in a world where people are always telling you that if you believe in yourself, that basically you’ve got a hero inside you and you can do anything you want, but the Bible says, no, no, inside us is corruption. And what we need is outside help.

I mean imagine I said to you this morning, how do you possibly hope to know God, and how do you hope to meet God one day safely, and you said, oh well, I’m going to live as best I can. And I want to say to you, you’ve not understood the gospel at all.

Do you think it’s possible to sit in a church like this and think, decade after decade, the answer is probably me being a good person?

I met somebody this week who’s been in a church for decades, has not heard anything, has never understood the gospel. Has sat in pews like this for decades and has never really understood that they need outside help, and so the coal had to come to Isaiah, just as the Lord Jesus Christ had to come to us, because we can’t make it ourselves, he had to come to us.

And this coal, we’re told, was part of the altar, and the altar was the place of course, where guilt was dealt with in the temple, not of course that sacrifice, animal sacrifice on the altar of the temple would really deal with human sin, but it was a symbol of the need for sin to be dealt with. The only way that human sin can be dealt with is because Jesus Christ comes into the world, a human, and pays our price for us.

And so now Isaiah, having been made clean by God is able to serve God and he’s going to serve God now as a forgiven man, not as a proud man, and he would remember forever that his place in God’s service was made possible by God, it was a gift, and all through the book of Isaiah, do you know how he refers to God, the Holy One, the Holy One, the Holy One.

If of course this had not been done for Isaiah, there would be no service. There has to be the coal before there is the call. And this coal coming to Isaiah is explained by God. Because you can imagine that if you’re Isaiah and you’re feeling very guilty, and suddenly a cold comes and burns your lips, you might interpret that to mean God hates me. He has struck me, he has burned me, is this a preview of being burned, but no, no, no, the coal is explained by God, this coal has come to burn away your guilt, it’s come to take away your sin.

It’s come to make you clean and ready for service. The Word of God always has to explain the way of God. In a few minutes we’re going to have the bread and the wine, and we need the bread and the wine to be explained, which is why for a minute or so, somebody will say something about what we’re doing because otherwise we would misunderstand.

Well, Isaiah in some wonderful way now is a forgiven man.

And the Lord says, well now we’ve got a job to be done, who will we send, and he might have said to the heavenly beings floating around, you would be great. Let’s get one of the heavenly beings to do the job for us. I mean, they’re perfect, they’re so effective, they would be so impressive, why don’t we get a heavenly being, but no God chooses a forgiven sinner, to go and speak to sinners.

And that’s what Isaiah is, he’s a forgiven sinner going off to speak to sinners, and he suddenly pipes up and he says, I’m willing, I’m happy to go, I would love to go, he’s not like Moses, I don’t want to go, he’s – I’d like to go.

But listen to the job that God gives him, your job, Isaiah, is to go and tell the people, be ever listening but never getting it, be ever seeing but never understanding it. Your job, Isaiah, this is your job, Isaiah, listen very carefully, it’s to make people harder. Blinder, deafer, calloused, dull, so that they won’t turn, that’s your job in the short-term, it’s to make people deader.

And you can understand why Isaiah then turns around and says, how long do I have to do this for?

These words about the Word of God making harder are quoted in the first six books of the New Testament. They’re quoted by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the book of Acts, and the book of Romans.

And I wonder if you realise therefore that whenever the Word of God is preached, it’s going to do one of two things, it’s going to harden or soften, it’s going to darken or illumine.

That’s why we need to listen so carefully and humbly.

And it’s very important when we go to measure ministry, because sometimes we measure ministry by success and numbers, but do you realise, dear friends, that it’s possible that a pastor, preacher, a servant of God, a missionary overseas, could be utterly faithful and see things get smaller.

I remember a Dutch man said to me once many years ago, pray for me, he said, I’ve been invited to a church in a certain place, which is completely dead, and I’m going to, when I get there, preach the word and I will empty the church.

Before the church fills, and he did, he emptied the church with his preaching. Before the church then began to fill.

So God may have a hardening effect, you see, on some before he then has a saving effect. And no wonder Isaiah calls out in chapter 6 verse 11, how long do I have to do this for, this is not a fun job, I don’t want to do this really. And the answer comes back, you’re gonna do this until the cities like Jerusalem are ruined. And the people are sent away.

But verse 13, up from the stump will come the holy seed, there will be a return to the promised land, and there will be the arrival, arrival of the saviour, the King, the Lord Jesus, because God knows how to build his people. Now I want to finish this morning, dear friends, by just telling you something very important. The steps that Isaiah walked are the steps that God’s people needed to walk.

He needed to face up to God.

Feel his sin.

Be washed.

And then be useful.

And the people of Israel needed to face God.

Realise their sin.

Get washed.

And be faithful.

And everybody in the world, if they’re going to have any hope in eternity, they need to face God.

They need to realise their need.

They need to get washed.

They need to follow.

And the way to do that today, how do we face God, we’re not going to get a vision in a temple, are we? We need to look at the face of Jesus Christ presented to us in the Word of God. We need to realise in the face of Jesus Christ that we do not measure up to him. And therefore we will never safely meet him. Unless we ask Him to wash us and forgive us. And we begin to follow.

The steps that Isaiah took are the steps that God’s people eventually would take, and they’re the steps that every person in this world needs to take. face Jesus, realise your need. Get washed, begin to follow, because God, you see, is going to gather his people. And the gates of hell will not prevail.

When a man called Lord Reath was the director of the BBC many years ago, he was a Scotsman and he was a Christian, and he was 6’6 tall. And he was walking the corridors of the BBC on one occasion, and there was a lot of laughter going on inside one of the rooms, and he opened the door and there were a lot of young people sitting around. And a lot of fun and laughter, and he said to them, what’s happening?

And they said we’ve planned a sketch for the BBC and it’s going to be the funeral of the church, and we’re very excited about this. We’re going to celebrate the burial of the church.

And Lord Wreath pulled himself up to his 6’6, and he said, young people, let me tell you that the Church of Jesus Christ will stand at the grave of every human institution.

And the Church of Jesus Christ has stood at the grave of every human institution, and it will stand at the grave of every human institution because God is going to gather his people – through the Lord Jesus.

Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this wonderful vision given to your servant, we thank you for the brilliant, cleansing that you bring to the needy, and the great privilege of following, and we pray that you would help us and so many in this city and country and world, to face up to the Lord Jesus, to see their need of him, to receive his washing, and to follow him with joy, for your praise and their good, and we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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